User reviews

I fell in love with the two-line plot description on the back of the DVD-cover and I simply had to see it because it sounded like THE stupidest low-budget production of the entire 80's decade! Dig this: "When an alien is forced to crash-land his ship on the earth's surface, he finds himself relentlessly pursued by a bunch of drunken rednecks." How cool is that? It sounds like all Science Fiction movies involving extraterrestrial life ever made before, only…the complete opposite! Writer/director Don Dohler delivers exactly what he promises and makes "The Galaxy Invader" a rather entertaining experience as long as you can tolerate amateurish acting performances, completely unconvincing special effects and meaningless dialogs that are extremely poorly written. There is indeed a lonely alien, looking an awful lot like the creature from the black lagoon, on the loose in the forests of Baltimore and the yokels at the local bar decide to hunt it down so they can sell it to the highest bidder. Especially the stereotypical portrayal of the local idiots is downright hilarious! These men chase their disobedient 25-year-old daughters with shotguns; always carry around at least two cans of Budweiser everywhere they go and wear filthy & torn up shirts. The hunting sequences (filmed at night) are embarrassingly poor and the ending – filmed by Dohler like it's some sort of heroic battle – is too stupid for words. The title is pretty misleading, as the green-suited alien doesn't do much invading and he certainly doesn't look very menacing with his minuscule gun and complementary crystal ball. Even according to TV-standards, this totally fails as Sci-Fi picture, but it guaranteed to make laugh out loud!

The creature design in this would have been rejected by 1960s era BBC.

The acting is awful, the writing is awful, and the dialogue is on par with a drunken toddler.

This was truly a "classic Cheese" movie. Although I overlooked the acting as I was looking for how "Cheezy" this movie might turn out. Sure enough, I was not disappointed. The story line was different than expected and the portrayal of how some men treated women in the film fit the time period. The most amazing and laughable component was toward the last part of the movie. I particularly enjoyed the catapulting of a "would-be- body" over a cliff. The pure physics of this feat was undeniably astounding! You have to see it to believe it! I watched this scene several times and I was in such a hysteric laugh stupor, I had to stop watching it. Overall, I really enjoyed this one.

The Galaxy Invader tells the story of a couple of clueless rednecks who come upon an alien with a powerful weapon. The pair believe that if they can capture the alien, they'll hit the jackpot. The alien, however, isn't going to be easy to take. The industrious rednecks recruit some friends from a local bar to help them out. Soon, the woods are full of drunken yokels with guns and an alien with an even more deadly gun. It's not a good combination.

The Galaxy Invader is another of those films that I find difficult to write about. Director Don Doher has either crafted one of the most inept pieces of garbage I've ever watched or he's intentionally created a master-class in "so bad it's good" filmmaking. While I suspect the former, there are so many aspects of the film that scrape the proverbial bottom-of-the-barrel that any breathing adult involved in making the film should have been able to see how horrid the whole thing was. There are so many examples of what I'm talking about that I could quite literally write pages about the direction, special effects, costuming, plot, and on and on. Instead, I'll focus on the acting and casting to try to make my point. I've written about poor acting in any number of movies. The Galaxy Invader, however, is on another level altogether. The acting here is so bad you really have ask yourself if it was done on purpose. Rarely do you hear the dialogue of an entire film delivered in such a stilted, unnatural fashion. I've seen elementary school plays with more believable acting. The casting only accentuates the poor acting. The family of hillbillys speaks with at least four different accents. Father has an over-the-top country sound. Mother sounds like she's from New England. Daughter sounds like she's straight out of Brooklyn. And the son speaks with very little noticeable accent - I don't believe that dopey isn't a regional dialect. Surely someone involved with the film noticed all this. Was it bad filmmaking or was it intentional and was Doher having a laugh?

In the end, The Galaxy Invader is bad - there's really no other way to look at it. The movie is horrible in every way a movie can be. However, it is not without some limited entertainment value - intentional or not. I'm rating it a 4/10.

There were a total of 3 effects in this movie: The first was the crappy animated "meteor" as it hit the earth. The second was the rubber suited alien (reminded me a lot of the creature from the black lagoon). Then there was the globe & gun thingy. Sadly, we didn't get to see a spaceship or even a hole in the ground---not even a studio cave.

The globe & gun contraption would have been fair had it been backed up by decent effects. The shots it fired and the dumb little firebursts were really lame.

Now the rubber mask wasn't bad. The first time it was shown it actually startled me (that's quite an accomplishment for a movie of this calibre). But from there it was all downhill.

Acting was just plain bad. And the only people in the whole cast who didn't look like they had just risen from a pigpen were the kid (David) and the alien. In my opinion the alien was the only decent actor in this mess---and that's probably cause he didn't have to talk. The kid would have been okay if he hadn't had that vacant expression on his face the whole time.

The story was dumb but had an unusual twist in that the alien was the one being chased instead of the usual opposite. But it seemed the story centred around the psychopathic Joe more than the alien. And occasionally you got the idea that maybe the producer had other things on his mind than the story at hand---I mean there were quite a few ass shots of those girls.

Brief recap of story: Alien crashes on earth. Crash is witnessed by college kid who tells his prof. But before prof can arrive, large group of morons (led by two even bigger morons) get together to hunt the alien. Constant bickering (and even killing) among the morons almost makes the viewer forget this is supposed to be a sci-fi movie. (Honestly, I really, really wanted that alien to off all those dopes except the boy & prof.---it would have been so satisfying.) The alien is captured, then gets away with help from boy & prof. But the hunt continues with several lives lost and a most unsatisfying ending. (You really feel sorry for that poor alien---not only because of the story, but because he had to be in the same movie with all those boneheads).

One other positive: it's in colour.

I gave this one a most generous 3 mostly because of the rubber suit & cause it was able to give me a little jump. Sci-fi night owls can probably endure thru this moronic mess without falling asleep---I did. Everyone else---don't waste your time.

It's so tempting to add this one to the coaster collection.

Okay, I gotta admit that this is the ONLY redneck, white-trash sci-fi film I have ever seen--so by default it is the best. And with a very charitable score of 2, this isn't saying much! I UFO lands in the country and the alien that came from it was actually pretty good--with an interesting costume and makeup. Unfortunately, from this auspicious start, the film was all down hill from there. Why? Because then the action switched to a group of horrid actors who made up a family that looked like they'd escaped from a John Waters film, such as FEMALE TROUBLE or PINK FLAMINGOS. The two daughters and wife were all pretty stupid and awful but compared to Daddy, they were like charm school graduates. Daddy was the most pointlessly obnoxious and trashy person I've seen in film in a long time--spending practically every second in the film with alcohol in his hand, cursing, threatening or shooting. Plus, his costume was the ever-present white t-shirt that was like one giant hole! And, to assist Daddy in all his obnoxiousness was his cigar-chomping and rather psychotic friend. Together they decided that it was a good idea to capture the alien and get rich. This was pretty much the whole plot. Daddy and his inbred idiot friend chasing the poor alien. In fact, this duo was so obnoxious and awful that the rest of the white trash decided to help the alien! The film is full of amateur acting, bad filming and horrid dialog. In no way other than the alien's costume is this film superior to films like PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. It honestly looks like someone's home movie starring their drinking buddies, though on this level it's good for an occasional laugh.

FYI--If anyone cares, this film was made in Maryland. As I saw some real similarities between this and some of the cheesier John Waters films I wonder if perhaps the writer/director Don Dohler wasn't perhaps a friend or associate of Waters or at least was seriously impacted by his work.

It was certainly a handcrafted movie, made in worst financial conditions as possible, the plot is fully nonsensical to start, foolish and lack of creativity, the synopsis is about a UFO which fell down at Maryland, a boy advises his school professor, they'll meet where the UFO crashed, although in the city a red neck Montague's family face the odd Alien invader, a sort of green rubber skin, he just grunts and has a strange space-gun together a noisy ball on the belt, thus leading by a drunkard Montague father's family and together a self-called smart guy gathers a lot of loafs to hunt the creature, worst impossible, laughable, I have to admit, I've stay between of an attack of laughs or about to cry watching this funny, enjoyable and absolute TRASH piece, at least had many hot girls on the plot to relief meantime!!!

Resume:

First watch: 2010 / How many: 2 / Source: DVD / Rating: 3.5

OK.

So - What's red, white, and green, and is (definitely) pure crap from start to finish? Why, it's this blasted, z-grade movie, of course, with its "red"-necks, its "white"-trash, and its "green" man from Mars (!?). And, yes, don't forget, its pathetically crappy storyline and its god-awful production values, as well.

What more can I say?

From this viewer's point of view, The Galaxy Invader was yet another prime contender desperately crying out to be recognized as "The Best/Worst Movie Of All Time". It really was.

Why is it that so many movies of such an inferior caliber as this one always seem to fit into either the genre of Horror or Sci-Fi? I mean, these 2 genres have been so saturated by rubbish of this sort for so long that it has almost become the expected norm.

Every single character in this film was completely one-dimensional and as utterly despicable as you could possibly imagine. (Yep. Even the children). These contemptible jerks (one, and all) were forever saying the most idiotic things to each other, non-stop. Believe me, it was enough to make one sick to their stomach in no time flat.

Thank goodness that the "Galaxy Invader", himself, never uttered a word. With the way that the other characters (with their decidedly Neanderthal mentality) regarded him in this film, he was, in reality, just a token symbol, quite obviously representing every ethnic minority (Black, Arab, Indian, etc.), all conveniently wrapped up into one lump of outer-space slime.

And naturally this "alien's" sole purpose for being in this situation as the hunted one was to allow the humans the opportunity to vent out their hatred on him in just the same way as they would treat anything that they so blindly chose not to understand, and, yet, at the same time, greedily wished to exploit for monetary gain.

Trust me when I say - Don't waste your time with this rubbish. It isn't even the least bit entertaining, or funny, or whatever.

What a load of worse than cheesy crap but kinda semi-funny. I think the humor was completely intentional... sorta a spoof on the old alien horror sci-fi films of the 50s, 60s maybe the 70s I'm guessing. I don't recall this film, maybe it was because it was a direct-to-video.

The lame hillbillies are better than the actual creature. They get so annoying that you can't wait for the creature to get them but you kinda want all of them to stick around just to hear the next dumb thing they say and do.

I think the creature kinda looks like The Swamp Thing in away. And it carries what looks like an alien egg that flashes to red sometimes.

It's lame enough to get a couple of giggles out of at best.

3/10

As someone who loves B-movies and camp classics, etc. this movie is just awful. The acting is so bad, I couldn't get involved in the movie, it seemed like the 'actors' were just reading Q-cards. I kept waiting for a plot, but it just wasn't there. I listened to a bunch of idiots arguing how to find the alien. The ending is just that, the film runs out, nothing is ever explained. The one thing that had my interest was the 'rednecks' Vs the alien thing. That seemed original, but the execution of the production killed it off. I'm not trying to be funny, but this movie seems like it was made by someone with a video camera who made the script up as they went along, and talked friends and family into 'acting' it out. I am surprised to see a few positive comments on this movie.

Back in high school, one of our favorite six-pack stinkers was The Fiend (1980), in which a supernatural creature resembling a radioactive Twistie enters the grave of a recently deceased music teacher. He comes back from the dead, naturally craving blood, but more unnaturally, still giving home lessons on the violin. It was one of a string of low-budget genre movies from Don Dohler, a Baltimore filmmaker who may have turned out like his more famous Baltimore counterpart John Waters if he'd spent less time gluing together fanzines and devouring Famous Monsters Of Filmland, and more time huffing nitrous and shimmying around with perverts.

And just like a John Waters film, Dohler's movies are filled with would-be thespian matrons and blockheads with thickly nasal Baltimore twangs screaming at each other in garishly decorated sets. In the case of The Galaxy Invader from 1985, it's the family of a violent, gun-toting alcoholic hillbilly doing the screaming - dear old Paw discovers the crash site of an alien in a green rubber reptile suit, and decides bagging a spaceman before the CIA does means big bucks on the black market. He rustles up a hunting party of greedy Harleyville hicks while the Moon Man goes on a Human Hunt. One early victim of the reptilian rampage is George Stover, a Don Dohler standby who keen-eyed John Waters watchers will recognize as Mink Stole's father in Waters' Desperate Living (1977).

Compared to most shot-on-video garbage released these days, it's an unexpected treat - shot on film with a distinct style, albeit a Z-grade one, and with a real wide-eyed, earnest and straight-faced appreciation of the genre which gives Don's movies a genuine charm. Sadly Don passed away in December 2006 aged 60, but he leaves behind the legacy of his hardly misspent life. Don Dohler, wherever you are in the cosmos, I salute you.

Although it's been awhile since I saw this movie, I recall that it was quite dreadful. Technically challenged with a script that is qualifies as a soap opera around a scaly reptile. Anne Frith's affected New England accent clashed big time with her on screen husband's ( Richard Ruxton's ) hillbilly drunken drawl. The Gloucester Fisherman meets Muff Potter.

While it may not be intentional Camp, by mixing T&A with Alcoholic Hillbilly's, New England Prudish Women and the Galaxy Invader itself, you come damn close to it.

Not to be missed!

If your looking for collection of these schlock films? Check out a DVD collection titled: SciFi Classics 50 movie set.

DVD is produced by TreeLine Entertainment.

This movie was on the collection.

Someone following in the footsteps of George Romero, Sam Rami.

Bunch of friends get together at someone's farm and make a movie.

But the plot idea is interesting.

Instead of the aliens going after the rednecks, the rednecks are after the alien.

If you have a afternoon to kill in the winter, movies like this will do it for you.

That's about all I can say about this movie. But then, nothing is as bad as Highlander 2. The story is definitely better than that horrid film, not that that is saying much.

It is, though, hard to believe that this was filmed in 1985 and not, say 1969 or 1970. Considering I don't think many of the folks in it were professional actors (or directors, writers, et. al.), it could've been worse, I guess.

This movie's greatest claim to fame is with MST3K fans, as portions of it are shown during the credits of the Film Ventures release of Pod People. It's too bad that The Galaxy Invader was never used on the show.

The Galaxy Invader who is a fellow in a Creature From The Black Lagoon costume crash lands in America. With a little luck he might have crash landed at Silicon Valley, or MIT, or Bill Gates's place in Seattle where he might have been studied and communicated with and good interplanetary relations established.

Instead the luckless Invader lands in the piney woods and some folks right out of Deliverance think they can capture him and maybe sell him to a carnival to exhibit. That's the plan these peckerwoods develop taking their NRA protected weapons out for a little alien hunting. Despite the efforts of one scientist who gets alerted by one of his students, one of the kids actually completed high school and is in university if you can believe.

This film is the creation of low budget independent film maker Don Dohler who used some of his kids in roles. They look good, but my cat could have done the dialog better. In fairness they're no worse than any of the other cast members not named Dohler.

The spirit of Ed Wood is alive and well.

It is so bad it is almost funny... but it's not. The sad thing is that I really wanted to see a bad cheesy sci fi movie, but it was too horrible to watch. The loud "eerie" sound effects, the ridiculous music, the bad camera angles, the incredible bad acting, the green rubber alien who breaths like Vader, the horrendous dialogue, the redneck father that wants to shoot his daughter because she threw a glass of water in his face...

Just stay away from it. I made the effort of writing enough of a comment so that it gets saved and protect potential viewers from this crap.

It pains me greatly that Dohler made this z movie as it is a real duffer. A spaceship crash lands in the woods. It contains one alien who is really stupid. Does this alien try to fix his ship? Not a chance he wanders around the woods waiting to get shot. Happily for him some red necks oblige and he has an inter galactic war with them. That turns out to someone firing rockets at trees. Then the alien is captured and... well I do not want to give the game away. The dialogue is pathetic. I think that Dohler must have known as he was really just going through the motions on this one.The plot is really slow and the acting fits in perfectly as it is terrible. On a plus side the music is excellent. Watch it if you want to watch a really really bad movie.

Appearing like a stranger from a strange land, The Galaxy Invader must have thrown people for a loop back in '85. At a time when slashers were all the rage, the PG level thrills and cracked sci-fi spills are about the last thing you could expect, but lowbrow legend Don Dohler pulls it off and then some. The key to it all is commitment, there's a fair amount of overlap between cast and crew and many of both cast and crew cut their teeth on previous Dohler pictures, which he had been making for a while. It all adds up to confidence, to actors pinging off each other with dramatic result, bold use of shaky effects, competent framing, poignant message, this is a film where all the lunacy can't overpower the fact that these people weren't screwing around. There's effort here and it shines. The plot wraps around an alien crash-landing in redneck backwoods territory espied by a couple of mean spirited idiots, Joe Montague and Frank Custor (can you smell the sweat?) who elect to catch and sell it. Meanwhile, a sky watching professor and his student are on the hunt for the being, and Joe's wife and daughter are just trying to get away safe from him. The film wrong-foots the viewer pretty early on, man is the aggressor here, man the wild beast. The title is a misnomer, the alien isn't any kind of an invader and is actually kinda sympathetic, also it has the look of a novelty store riff on the Creature from the Black Lagoon. At times it almost feels like a red herring in its own film, such is the focus on the nefarious Joe. With a lesser actor this wouldn't have worked at all, but Richard Ruxton brings a tour de force to the table, with a perpetual scowl plastered on his face and twitchy, violently irate demeanour he blows gusts of derangement through his every moment of screen time, a remarkable gonzoid villain. Don Leifert is slightly lower key but nonetheless palpably loathsome as Frank, while various Dohler relatives and local types bulk out the cast. There are a few shootings, cool shonky mini explosion effects and powerful spurts of tension, this undoubtedly aided by driving synths from Norman Noplock (sadly this is his only credit), like I said up top this one is committed and so when it strikes, it strikes hard. Things move at a smart clip and the short runtime feels like a breeze, by the time the ending locks in it's a breathless ride and the ending itself is a terrific capper. Now I wouldn't possibly recommend this to "regular" cinema fans, but as a devotee of low budget science fiction lunacy I thought this a really great time. If you're still reading this, you might to. Check it out say I, 7/10.